Finance committee  I do like the IRAP. In fact, I have talked to some start-up companies that have qualified for some of the various government programs. One of the interesting things that I've talked to some of the entrepreneurs about is that they got a lot of help vis-à-vis business plans when go

Finance committee  I'll be very quick. It's such a great example. Quebec decided to give a tax holiday to high-tech companies that would set up in...I think it was three buildings in Montreal. The people who owned the building were pretty smart. They just jacked up the rents and they captured most

Finance committee  Well, there are some ways in which people do try to estimate some of the costs, but not all the ones you're thinking of. For example, the cost of raising tax revenues has been studied quite a bit. In fact, my colleague Bev Dahlby at the University of Calgary, who is actually on

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be before the finance committee. Over the years, I have done this a number of times, so it's always nice to see you again. “Corporate welfare” is a loaded term that most economists would simply define as business subsidies or gr

Finance committee  First of all, when the stakeholders were told, “You're not going to get a corporate rate reduction”, they were all quite happy to have at least something, so I'm not sure that tells you very much. Again, I don't think that is the criterion for a good tax system. The criterion fo

Finance committee  I'm glad to hear that.

Finance committee  I think the best process would be to perhaps have a good look at the kind of issues around the corporate tax that we need to address, some of them raised by the OECD base erosion profit shifting study. Other countries have been responding to that. We haven't done a lot yet with r

Finance committee  I think the biggest issue facing Canada when talking about competitiveness—and I don't want to overplay it too much—is that we have a number of disadvantages as a country that are natural. Our relatively small population base is spread over a big geography along the U.S. border,

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This is a real smorgasbord of different topics, but I guess that's what you'd expect with an omnibus bill like Bill C-97. Thank you very much for your invitation to speak about Bill C-97, an act to implement certain provisions related to the bu

International Trade committee  I'll try to keep my answer brief, but as you can imagine I could probably spend an hour talking about this in a reply. I want to start with the point about tax reform. I do think we need tax reform. We had a major tax reform back in 1972 in the wake of the Carter report and the

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. I thought I would start, in talking about the importance of trade to small and medium-size enterprises, by going back to a bit of theory about why we think trade is important. It's not hard to convince Canadians of that, because

Finance committee  It may. I don't really know the answer to that question, because it's something one would have to study a little more carefully. I do know that succession planning is a huge issue for small business. Of course, selling a small business itself is important. That's where the lifet

Finance committee  First of all, when you look at the data and you see who benefits from the small business income tax reduction or from owning Canadian-controlled private corporations, many of the taxpayers—a very large share, 50% to 60%—have household income of more than $200,000. The increase in

Finance committee  Yes. It's not hard to do. The Department of Finance gives a request to the Canada Revenue Agency for certain types of information. They can even bring in some good academics to work on it—someone like Michael Veall, who is a witness today. Let's try to understand how migration

Finance committee  When I look at the tax system today, I see a number of various credits and deductions that have been introduced over the years. What typically happens is that you have a system where special credits, deductions, and preferences are brought in, and then you look at it and say, “Wh